The Mountain in the Sea | Non Human Intelligence

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Evolution built advanced minds, not once, but at least twice, gifting them not only to mammals and their kin, but also to cephalopods, and especially to the animal at the apex of ocean intelligence, the octopus. These animals so unlike us that most aliens we imagine in our fantasies about outer space have more in common with humans. But there is no denying their sentience. I believe the first aliens we encounter will rise to greet us from the sea. With AI content on the rise, YouTube is recommending human narrators less and less. If you appreciate my content, consider hitting the like button and subscribing. Thanks so much, guys. The Mountain in the Sea is a science fiction book by Ray Naylor that focuses on events surrounding the Kondao Archipelago in Vietnam. This had been a place where strange stories persisted even before the Dianama Corporation bought out the entirety of it, creating a research facility and displacing the locals. In this world, corporations have more power and wealth than many countries. The intersection of technology, capitalism, and surveillance culture has led to a society where corporate goals override national interests and ethical considerations. Problematic individuals are often discarded in this world. Slavery persists, and new forms of intelligence, both artificial and biological, are emerging and challenging the definitions of consciousness and autonomy. Keep in mind this video will have spoilers for the mountain in the sea. The main events begin when biologist Dr. Ha Nilyan is brought to Kandao. Something is occurring there that might not have occurred in any other place in the world. There is evidence that in the water surrounding Kandao, a new species has developed, and possibly possesses a form of structured symbolic communication. Initially, Ha is not fully convinced. She recognizes that octopuses are highly intelligent and individual, but she also knew that there were barriers to them ever becoming able to form conscious awareness, meaningful communication, or a true culture. The largest of those barriers was lifespan. Most octopuses only lived for two years max. Smaller species only a season. Coldwater octopuses who lived deeper in the ocean had longer lives but were less intelligent than their closer to shore cousins. She knew that if it was possible, it would develop in octopuses that lived closer to the shore. Another major barrier was their biology. After mating, males die soon after, and females often starve to death guarding their eggs. Even if they survived, their offspring typically drift far from their birthplace, severing any chance of generational continuity. This means young octopuses grow up without parents, without mentors, without any stable community. For most species, there's simply no opportunity to pass down knowledge, neither across generations nor within them. They live short, solitary lives and start as blank slates. The only inheritance they receive is genetic, instincts, and physical traits. The book draws attention to how radically different that is from humans. Our culture depends on shared memory, language, and social structures that accumulate over time. If every generation had to relearn everything from scratch, civilization wouldn't exist. Even sites like Octopolis and Octantis, real locations where octopuses gather seasonally, don't necessarily indicate true culture. They must be anomalies, not evidence of sustained social learning. Ha believes that while octopuses are undeniably smart, their evolutionary path may have locked them out of the kind of consciousness that builds civilizations. Kandao is fertile ground for rumors. Everyone who lives here, she corrected herself, who lived here, I mean, saw ghost. When I visited here as a child, you couldn't speak to a local without ghost coming into the conversation. The ancestral spirit of Vo Tai Sa combing her long black hair in Hangduang Cemetery. The starved dead wandering in the shadows between the trees. The stories go on and on. Too many people died in the prisons here for their not to be stories of ghost. The residents lived in a world half composed of spirits. This archipelago is ripe for weird cryptozoology. The potential sentience of the octopuses of Kandao is not the only focus of this book. A major focus of this book is AI. The research team is led by Evrem, who is an invention of the Dianema Corp, specifically the scientist Dr. Minervu Del Tyrchan, Evrem, whose name means evolution, was built based on the structure of many human minds, including Dr. Minervu Del Tyrchan herself, at its core. He was believed to be the only artificially created conscious being ever. The world had reacted negatively to Evrim's creation, leading Dr. Minervu Deltier Chan to place him on the archipelago out of sight. Ostensibly, Evrem was created to be human, but in reality, Minerviudeltier Chan had created him to surpass man. He was a being of perfect recall, of perfect memory. Happening simultaneously to the events on Kondao are two other storylines which eventually all connect. Rustim, a programmer and hacker, is hired to hack a neural network, an AI mind. But this particular mind he's been hired by a mysterious group to hack is the most complex he has ever encountered. Initially, he does not think he will be able to hack it. The company that has hired him is mysterious and elusive, willing to kill to protect their secrets. Over time, Rustim comes to admire the construction and the perfection of the mind he is attempting to hack. It's comparable to a human mind, but more elegant and clearly constructed as Rustim identifies what he metaphorically refers to as its seams. The other storyline, and one of the most interesting parts of the entire book, revolves around an automated fishing vessel called the Seawolf, run by trafficked slaves and hired mercenary guards. We see the events on board through the eyes of Captive Echo. The ship's AI mind worked based on pure logic. Its objective was to fish and to serve the needs of the corporation who had built it and illegally allowed it to function with the use of slaves. Over time, Ako witnesses the madness of the ship's mind, especially when its objective is initially threatened by Alaskan pirates. The AI mind of the ship showed them no mercy. The shudder of impact. Aka was crawling across the floor, not thinking, moving to the port side window. Have to see, have to know. The seawolf's spotlights played across the writhing chop. There, off the port side, dark shapes of men in the water, the gray ship slipping under, sides staved in. Rammed them, so daring, desperate, something a human would do. A pale face looked up out of the sea, black bearded and wide-eyed. A chatter of bullets from the sea wolf's gone whale pushed it down into the red water. The recoil's rifle hammered in fury, like a madman who continues to stab a corpse. The wheelhouse of the gray ship tore away in flame. Madness, not logic. Moments later, the gray ship went under. Acho saw its shadow for a moment descending, the fire in its wheelhouse still burning beneath the water, like an oil lamp behind waxed paper, then gone. Madness. The opaque hardened glass of the wheelhouse, its reinforced steel plate door. Beyond it, the mind illed with its economic logic, its production calculations. The mind also full of rage and violence. What monsters have we made? There was more than cold logic in the mind of the ship. There was anger, full on rage at having been attacked. It didn't simply subdue the enemy, it annihilated them. Also on board the ship is another enslaved person named Sun, a man originally from the Kandao Archipelago. It's through him that Eiko learns of Kandao, and the monster said to reside there. Tales of mysterious deaths and unexplained sightings near the shores. Back on the island, Ha and the research team are observing the local octopuses through underwater drones, and they eventually witness the use of what appears to be symbolic language by the octopuses. Eventually, Ha attempts communication by recreating a symbol on the shore. There was a response, but it was not the one they wanted. This symbol was rough, hasty. The edges were blurred here and there by a jutting or misplaced piece of material. But its shape was clear enough. The arrow directed away from the water up the beach. Its tip was tilted to the left. It pointed exactly at the hotel. This symbol too was made mostly of darker rocks, seaweed and driftwood. But there were other objects mixed in. Ha bent down. Among the seaweed, driftwood, and stones were pieces of the submersible drone sent into the shipwreck. The one that had been destroyed. The submersible had been torn apart. Pieces of its hull and internal workings were scattered inside the symbol. And there were other things. A dive mask, scuba tanks, a spear gun, a glove. And Ha almost did not recognize it right away. It was crusted with barnacles and green vertebrate so that it did not stand out from the other objects under the light of the moon. Waning now from full for the last several days, but still bright enough in the sky. Of all the objects, it was placed with the most care near the tip of the arrow that pointed back to the hotel. Staring up, unseeing into the sky, a human skull. It was complete, with all its teeth in place, and its lower jaw hinged open, looking up as if agape at the beauty of the stars overhead. The crescent-shaped symbol represents the barrier of the octopus's domain. The arrow pointing outward formed it into one obvious message. Stay out. Before Dianema came, there were tales of divers going missing underwater, being found drowned with all of their equipment removed. Stories of gashings and stabbings along the shore, shadows arising from the ocean. These creatures were hostile. But that is the point. We were hostile first. This is a story about communication, the differences between different forms of intelligence. To the octopus, we were the monsters from the shore, lumbering beasts of rigid flesh, incapable of the silent fluid language of gesture and hue. Our machines tore through reefs like storms, our nets strangled their kin, our lights pierced the sanctuary of their dark. To them we were not explorers, we were invaders. And so they learned, adapted, and remembered. Ha realizes that this has been going on for quite some time. Convergent evolution. They continue to observe and attempt communication with the octopuses, eventually witnessing an individual octopus who they name Shapesinger, communicating a poem to others gathered around it. The octopuses use their body's ability to fluidly shift color to create representative symbols of language on their skin. The team also observes that the octopuses cooperate with each other, and they have culture. Eventually they find a kind of altar with thirty human skulls within. The octopuses had drawn on them using ink, demonstrating an ability to preserve their symbols and knowledge beyond producing the symbols on their bodies or forming them in debris. The bone was deeply etched all over, and the etched forms were filled with a dark substance. The line stood out black against the white of bone, interlocking shapes in which Ha saw several she recognized as having flashed across the skin of one of the octopuses. Here, though, there was no linear sequence, just forms fitted within forms, a pattern of mesh symbols laced across the curves of Maxilla, Foramen, Septum, each skull slotted into the carved coral wall as a work of careful art, each different from the others. On board the Seawolf, a mutiny occurs. The slave workers kill the guards and threaten the ship. Without them knowing, the AI mine seals off all essential, vulnerable areas, cuts the food supply, and then the water. It turns out that the guards had mainly been for show. The crew could either work or be starved and dehydrated. The ship had one objective, to meet the fishing quota. But there was more. Because of what they did, the ship continued to starve them, giving them half food rations even once they started working. This was making the crew weaker. Eiko, who had realized that the ship operates on a system of economic logic, attempts to reason with the sea wolf. It appears to work, as the sea wolf provides them with double rations that night. Throughout the book, we see that sometimes automated fishing vessels like the sea wolf will sometimes come up to the shores of Kandao in an attempt to fish the rich waters. They were always shot down by the island's defenses. At the end of the book, this is where the sea wolf is headed as well. Rostem knows that whether or not he hacks the mind or not, the mysterious group who hired him will still attempt to kill him. The mind he is attempting to hack isn't just a program, it's a palace, intricate and vast. He eventually does find a portal into the mind left by its creator, a pathway to its center that could control it, but he refuses to hand it over to the people who hired him. He recognizes its beauty and its uniqueness. This mind, Evrem, is not something that should be controlled. He kills the woman who hired him before she can kill him first, but not before she tells him that he is making a mistake. Evram is a monster, she claims. When the sea wolf reaches Kandao, it is attacked. It has come too close to the shores of the archipelago. It is obliterated by the defenses. Aiko and Sun find a raft released by the seawolf itself, perhaps in a final gesture of mercy as it sink below the depths. Eiko and Sun hide from a security drone that's executing the remaining crew, but in the chaos, Sun is killed. As Eiko drifts, he sees something watching from the depths. Eyes, many eyes, staring from the dark water. Evrem around this time reveals that he had a vision of Rustim, the very day that he had met Ha. In it, Rustim had told him the portal in his mind meant to control him would be destroyed. Evrem believes that Dr. Minervo Doltier Chan, who has come to the island at this point, wants to shut him down because that portal, her link to his mind, has been shut down. He believed that she intended to kill him. From the perspective of the octopuses, they are being attacked by the humans, so they attack the place where they know that humans are, the hotel complex. Later, Dr. Minervo Del Tyrchan is found dead, killed by the octopuses. Her death wasn't vengeful. It was simply practical. She was in the way. To the octopuses, humans are not inherently important. They are indifferent towards us. Killing her was as inconsequential to them as a human killing a fish, or swatting an annoying fly. It wasn't malevolent evil, as in the tales of the Kandao monster, merely indifference. When humans were in the way, they were removed from the equation. In reverse, humans did likewise. But for the first time something was happening differently here on Kandao. The octopus they had named Shapesinger was different. Ha had bonded with her, forming a fragile bridge of mutual recognition. She realizes that while they had been watching and studying the octopuses, Shapesinger had been studying them all along, moving along as she willed, silently gathering data. She must have hidden in the pool when the others left, Evram said. But why? To try to speak to us, Ha said. And it's not a pool. It's her submersible. It's her research station. It is her outpost in our world. She has been watching us from the beginning, and now she felt as if something were in the room with her, had been in here with her for a while now. And not only from there, she has gone anywhere she wanted to, observing us, and we never saw her. This isn't a story of a perfect utopian unity between octopuses and humans. It's a story about the difficulty of communication, the many ways in which it can go wrong, and a story about the horror of indifference. The indifference of those who run the companies that set slave ships in motion, the indifference of humanity towards the other life on this planet that we make extinct. But in the end of this story, we do see that a seed was planted, a single link bridging two species, a connection between two individuals, Ha and Shapesinger. From there, something else could be built. Evram, who as I mentioned earlier, was built based on the minds of many humans, reveals at the very end that the core of his consciousness was based on the doctors. That meant that he had knowledge of his own creation. He could make more of himself. Evram is more than a singular mind. He is a seed, a self-replicating consciousness, potentially, a species in the making. In the epilogue of the story, Aiko drifts ashore with Sun's lifeless body. On the raft released by Seawolf, he reads that the ship had been operated by a subsidiary of Diana McCorp. The same corporation behind the Khan Dao project. This clearly relates to a metaphor that is presented earlier in the book. Corporations functioning like octopuses. An octopus has a central brain, but each of its limbs also contains neurons that allow them to act semi-independently, even without direction or sometimes awareness from the central brain. In the same way, corporations like the Dianema Corp operate through many branching subsidiaries, each acting on its own logic. As a result, Dianima was simultaneously producing the slave ships and destroying them. The corporation wasn't acting out of contradiction, but out of fragmented, self-replicating logic that doesn't require consistency, only momentum. The Malin in the Sea makes you rethink what it means to be intelligent and to communicate. The octopuses of Kandao show that intelligence doesn't always look like ours, and their ability to develop culture and symbolism makes us question assumptions that we make about non-human minds. The novel also explores the consequences of unchecked technological and corporate power. And also, just like the octopuses, Evram is driven by more than just logic. He feels, he adapts, and he challenges human ideas of what it means to be truly alive and conscious. This was a pretty fantastic book, and it also made me think of Villeneuve's movie Arrival, which is also an amazing work of science fiction about communication between species. You should really check that out if you haven't seen that. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe, and thank you so much for watching.